User-Agent in HTTP requests

[Mark Taylor]

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009, Doug Tody wrote:

> Hi Mark -
> 
> The HTTP Referer header is a logical place to put this and is currently
> unused by our clients, so I support your suggestion.  The client in
> question might be something like Aladin or Topcat, or it could be
> client middleware such as ACR or VOClient.

thanks Doug.  To clarify: Referer is appropriate if the 'client' is
effectively a web page (a resource with a URI), since Referer MUST
contain a referring URI; User-Agent is appropriate if the 'client' 
is an application or library or other non-resource-type agent 
(Aladin, TOPCAT, ACR and VOClient all fall into this latter category).

> So far as the DAL protocols go the logical place to put this would
> be in whatever we end up with which describes the common protocol
> elements, e.g., the service architecture and standard profile doc
> which applies to all services.  This would be appropriate for protocol
> details at this level, along with other HTTP-specific guidelines on
> compressing streams and the like.

Yes, that would be ideal.  I almost suggested that this guideline 
should go in a generic DAL overview document, but I wasn't sure 
to what extent such an item existed or was planned.

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/